Pictorial Records of Korea from the 16th to 19th Century
Editors’ Preface
[Part 1] Europe’s Knowledge of Korea: The First Steps
The Portuguese
Early Dutch Reports: Dirck Gerritsz and Jan Huyghen
The Dutch Reach Japan
Matteo Ricci
Alvaro Semedo
Martino Martini
Arnoldus Montanus
Hendrick Hamel
The Impact of Hamel’s account
Nicolaas Witsen
Jean Baptiste du Halde and Jean-Baptiste R?gis
[Part 2] From the late 18th century into the 19th Century
Lap?rouse Sails Past Jeju Island in 1787
William Robert Broughton in Busan and Jeju Island in 1797
First News of the Catholic Church in Korea
The Silk Letter of 1801
Basil Hall and others Visit the Korean West Coast in 1816
Korea Seen from Japan in 1828: von Siebold
Hugh Hamilton Lindsay Sails into Korean Waters in 1832
Sir Edward Belcher Explores Jeju Island and the South-West Coast in 1845
Arthur Adams Admires the Ecology of Jeju Island in 1845
The French Begin to Look Toward Korea: Cecille’s 1846 visit
Lapierre
This anthology is a compilation of Westerners’ accounts of their visits to Korea, originally published in books or newspapers before the country opened its doors in the late nineteenth century. The opening of Korea made it possible to explore the country in detail and write detailed accounts. Prior impressions were garnered mostly from brief visits to remote islands along the coast. The accounts published here are mainly anecdotal, and contain many generalizations. However, the accumulated impressions of these early encounters surely influenced the perspectives of later travelers, and help explain the overwhelmingly negative image of Korea that Western governments harbored at the time.
The book can serve as a useful resource for studying Korea’s early interactions with the outside world, and will give readers an idea of the criteria by which Westerners judged the foreign “other.”
